Now you can run HPLC Simulator from your phone or tablet! We packed nearly all of the functionality of the full simulator into an app that fits on your phone.

You'll be the life of the party when you whip out your HPLC Simulator for Android and use it to teach your friends about gradient delay. Explain the general elution problem to your kids while you eat breakfast! Demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of small particle size while you ride the bus! Take HPLC with you everywhere you go.

Seriously, though - it's incredibly useful.

HPLC Simulator

HPLC Simulator is a web-based high-performance liquid chromatography simulation. Adjust a range of experimental parameters and see their affect on chromatographic parameters including retention time, column efficiency, and backpressure. It is intended to be used for educational purposes only. If you're interested in accurate HPLC retention prediction, see www.retentionprediction.org.

In the Educational Resources tab, you'll find resources for teaching with the HPLC simulator through virtual labs and problem sets.

Technical support for the simulator can be found in the appropriate forum. We also invite your questions, comments, and suggestions.

HPLC Fluid Visualizer is a tool that helps visualize fluid flow through the complex series of valves and tubing often used in high-performance liquid chromatography. Place pumps, valves, and other HPLC parts in the workspace, connect them with tubing, and the software will automatically calculate backpressure, dispersion, and gradient delay.

Technical support for HPLC Fluid Visualizer can be found in the appropriate forum. We also invite your questions, comments, and suggestions.

The gradient profile actually produced by your HPLC instrument can be very different from the one you program it to produce. Unless the differences are properly measured and taken into account, they can cause run-to-run variation in your retention times and unexpected shifts in retention when transferring methods between HPLC instruments.

1) It is easy to use and fast.
2) It generally doesn't matter what type of detector you use - a mass spectrometer works great.
3) There's no need to reconfigure your HPLC to measure the gradient profiles it produces.
4) The gradient profiles are measured under precisely the same experimental conditions as your regular reversed-phase LC-MS runs, making them more true-to-life than other approaches.

To use the column tester, you run a test mixture of 16 compounds and load your LC-MS data file into the software available for free (for non-commercial use) on the website. It processes the data file and automatically extracts a host of information about the column including: column selectivity (hydrophobicity, steric icons interaction, hydrogen bond acidity, hydrogen bond basicity, and charge interaction), number of theoretical plates (N), Height Equivalent to a Theoretical Plate (HETP), column dead time (t0), peak width at half height for each standard (FWHM), and USP tailing factors.

retentionprediction.org is a new website that is home to the Retention Predictor - a piece of open-source software that enables retention predictions of unprecedented accuracy (e.g. ±2.8 s in a 20 min gradient).

Retention Predictor takes a new angle on retention prediction. First, you spike your sample with a set of approximately 15 "instrument calibration solutes". Then you run your sample with whatever gradient program, flow rate, and HPLC instrument you want and report the retention times of the instrument calibration solutes to Retention Predictor. It then back-calculates what the effective gradient and flow rate profiles must have been to give those retention times. With those back-calculated profiles, Retention Predictor can calculate retention of other compounds with extremely high accuracy. That's because the back-calculation fonts methodology enables you to very precisely and easily account for all the imperfections of your HPLC instrument that would otherwise cause considerable error in retention predictions.

At the moment, it's more of a demonstration than a useful tool because isocratic retention database only holds measurements for 35 compounds, but check back in the coming months when the database is expanded.

HPLC Performance Optimization Calculators

Dwight Stoll, a collaborator on this project and faculty member in the Chemistry department at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN) has developed two web-based HPLC optimization calculators based on a recent Analytical Chemistry article. See them here.